In addition to my previous post, here’s a bit more on running an architect’s office. Just pick the version that you find most appealing.
The net/gross factor is important. For the client that is, not for you as an architect. Net/gross factors are based on mediocre standards. Your task is to lift the job from mediocrity. You are paid for excellence. Budgets might seem fixed, but they are not. There is always space for ambition. Generate enthusiasm for your design and the client will be happy to increase your budget.
Discuss. It will make your crew members feel appreciated. But be honest. Don’t protect your brainchildren. Give priority to the product, not to your status. If someone has a better idea, admit it. If your idea cannot stand interaction, it is not a good idea.
Focus. Keep it simple. If it gets too complicated, break it up in chew able chunks. Whatever your concept may look like, make it iconic. The Guggenheim is iconic. CCTV is iconic. Logos are iconic. Simplicity is the language of the masses. Design your building like you would design a logo. Think in slogans.
Use a storyboard for your presentation. it will provide you and your co workers a focus. Moreover, you will be sure you won’t produce too much. Everything you do that won’t used in a presentation, is wasted time and energy.
Above: image of a storyboard borrowed from PingMag.
Using reference projects of other architects in your presentation is a sign of weakness. Using the client’s logo more than once is a sign of weakness. These are compensations to make a weak presentation look interesting. Your design should speak for itself.
Use mood boards. They generate enthusiasm. It will able the client to identify with the design.
Above: image of a mood board borrowed from Eva Artinger.
You need to work on scale, and AutoCad is a useful tool. But print to paper as soon as you have the outlines and start sketching. Sketching is intuitive and liberating and effective. Leave the computer to your draftsmen. You’ll find out they’re not just Cad monkeys and can actually think. Just give them guidelines and they will fill in the rest. They will add value to your design. It is not just an option to give their role more substance and move it to the forefront of the design process. It is a responsibility. If you don’t, they will loose their jobs, because drafts work as we know it will move to India (see here). Moreover, it leaves you more time for the actual design job.
A design team leader is a volleyball player. Every time a request from a client comes in, pass it to your co workers. Delegate. If you don’t, you will loose yourself in details, which will draw your attention away from the overview and the acquisition of new projects.
Planning is most effective when practiced in advance. The equation is simple: budget/salary=available hours. It helps you to get a grip on the project. An AutoCad drawing, a Sketchup model, a Photoshop image, these things just need the time they need. As opposed to design activities, these activities are pure production, predictable and measurable. If you don’t have a clue, start using a stopwatch at what you do. Seriously. It will give you a notion of how long things take. Ultimately you can use these activities like Lego blocks in your planning process. It will avoid stress, tension and exhaustion.
Architecture is management. These suggestions might provide a leverage to lift you out of, or prevent you for mediocrity.
Good post , really interesting !!
This so-called ’serious version’ is even more grim than your ‘cynical’ one precisely because it is serious. Your proposed office sounds like a the worst kind of manipulative, superficial, and dishonest place to work. You can’t just ‘discuss’ the project to ‘make your crew members feel appreciated’ – they actually have to have a voice that counts, which is called collaboration, not ‘delegation’ (or volley-ball). Storyboards are the superficial tools of the advertising industry, architecture has more substance and subtlety than can be conveyed using ‘logos’ or ’slogans’. ‘Mood boards’ are just lame, clients don’t really like them, they’re condescending and imply that they can’t understand the actual project. Finally, architecture isn’t management. It’s design. Put good office systems in place and the management will look after itself, letting you get back to the real work: designing.
Points taken. You are right when you say that architecture is a lot more subtle than the points stated above, but these points should be taken as hints and were meant to be more nuanced than they were stated.
Your point on collaboration is right. Delegation however is just necessary, you cant disagree about that, as you can’t do everything alone. Storyboards are necessary to define a storyline in your presentation. About moodboards you might be right though.
And I still think architecture should be iconic, and in this perspective you could either compare them to logos or slogans.
I appreciate all things mediocre. It is the only hope I have to be less than mediocre. If the world around me becomes less mediocre, my chances of standing out become dimmer and dimmer so my thanks go out to all you developer/contractor/owner/wanna-be designers. Also, thanks for the intreaguing posts. When I first read the cynical version, I thought for a second, I was doing things all wrong. The funny thing is that I have worked with people who fit the description to a T.